Can Parliaments be Strengthened? A Case Study of Pre-Legislative Scrutiny

How successful are attempts to strengthen the capacity of national legislatures to better perform their law-making function? In response to executive dominance, some legislatures have attempted organizational reform to strengthen their capacity. One such institutional innovation is pre-legislative scrutiny (PLS) - a process whereby a parliamentary committee scrutinizes draft bills and reports back with observations and/or recommendations to the ministry sponsoring the legislation. PLS is designed to enhance the capacity of parliament to influence government-sponsored legislation. We measure the impact of PLS on legislative outcomes by conducting a content analysis of PLS reports and subsequent Government bills introduced to the Irish Parliament between 2011 and 2016. This analysis is supplemented with an in-depth case study of legislative change around gender recognition. The mixed method analysis suggesting that PLS can have a substantive impact on proposed government legislation. PLS serves to strengthen the role of parliament in law-making, with positive, and arguably generalizable, consequences for stakeholder engagement, parliamentarians and the quality of legislation.